(2.ii.13) If it were the natural tendency of capital to increase faster than population, therewould be no difficulty in preserving a prosperous condition of the people. If, on the other hand, it werethe natural tendency of population to increase faster than capital, the difficulty would be verygreat. There would be a perpetual tendency in wages to fall. The progressive fall of wages wouldproduce a greater and a greater degree of poverty among the people, attended with its inevitableconsequences, misery and vice. As poverty, and its consequent misery increased, mortalitywould also increase. Of a numerous family born, a certain number only, from want of the meansof well-being, would be reared. By whatever proportion the population tended to increase fasterthan capital, such a proportion of those who were born would die: the ratio of increase in capitaland population would then remain the same, and the fall of wages would proceed no farther.
(2.ii.14) That population has a tendency to increase faster, than, in most places, capital hasactually increased, is proved, incontestably, by the condition of the population in most parts ofthe globe. ln almost all countries, the condition of the great body of the people is poor andmiserable. This would have been impossible, if capital had increased faster than population. Inthat case wages must have risen; and high wages would have placed the labourer above themiseries of want.
(2.ii.15) This general misery of mankind is a fact, which can be accounted for, upon oneonly of two suppositions: either that there is a natural tendency in population to increase faster thancapital, or that capital has, by some means, been prevented from increasing so fast as it has atendency to increase. This, therefore, is an inquiry of the highest importance.
2. Proof of the tendency of Population to increase rapidly (2.ii.16) The natural tendency of population to increase is to be collected from two sets ofcircumstances; the physiological constitution of the female of the human species; and thestatements respecting the rate of increase in different countries.
(2.ii.17) The facts respecting the physiological constitution of the human female are wellascertained, and are indubitable grounds of conclusion. The statements respecting the rate ofincrease in different countries will be found to be, either suppositions with respect to matters offact, upon the conformity of which suppositions to any real matters of fact we can have noassurance; or statements of facts, of such a nature, as prove nothing with regard to the points indispute.
(2.ii.18) That the possible rate of increase in the numbers of mankind depends upon theconstitution of the female, will not be disputed. The facts, which are fully ascertained in regardto the female of the human species, and the inferences which the sciences of physiology andcomparative anatomy enable us to derive from the analogy of other animals, whose anatomy andphysiology resemble those of the human species, afford the means of very satisfactoryconclusions on this subject.
(2.ii.19) The females of those species of animals, whose period and mode of gestation aresimilar to those of the female of our own species, and which bring forth one at a birth, arecapable, when placed in the most favourable circumstances, of a birth every year, from the timewhen the power of producing begins, till the time when it ends, omitting one year now and then,which, at the most, amounts to a very small proportion on the whole.
(2.ii.20) The suckling of the infant, in the case of the female of the human species, ifcontinued more than three months, has a tendency to postpone the epoch of conception beyond the periodof a year. This, it is to be observed, is the only physiological peculiarity which authorizes aninference of any difference in the frequency of the births in the case of the female of the humanspecies, and in that of those other species to which we have referred.
(2.ii.21) To reason correctly, we should make an allowance for that peculiarity. Let suchample allowance be made as will include all interruptions; let us say that one birth in two years isnatural to the female of the human species. In Europe, to which we may at present confine ourobservations, the period of childbearing in women extends, from sixteen or seventeen, toforty-five, years of age. Let us make still more allowance, and say it extends only from twenty toforty years of age. In that period, at the allowance of two years to one birth, there is time for tenbirths, which may be regarded as not more than the number natural to the female of the humanspecies.
(2.ii.22) Under favourable circumstances, the mortality among children is very small.
Mortality among the children of very poor people is unavoidable, from want of the necessary means ofhealth. Among the children of people in easy circumstances, who know and practise the rules forthe preservation of health, the mortality is small; and there can be no doubt, that, under moreskilful modes of managing the food, and clothing, the air, the exercise, and education ofchildren, even this mortality would be greatly diminished.
